Archive for December, 2009

2009 has been a really great year for me. Of course, I’ve had some highs and lows, but mostly highs that are great enough that can overshadow the lows. I met some wonderful people, ran a fantastic race with my best friend, bought a fabulous condo (lovingly dubbed “The Bachelorette Pad”), successfully juggled two great jobs, and overall had a really fun time!

I’ve never really been one to have New Year’s resolutions, because it seems like you’re just asking yourself to fail when you put so much expectation on yourself. (though I’d really like to start getting my normally punctual butt to work on time more often) But I do know that I have a few things I’m planning to accomplish this year, and they will be done, such as Hooping the Half Marathon, and continuing running, and visiting more with Barbie (maybe we’ll run another great race together!). But I guess if I could have New Year’s resolutions or New Year’s wishes, I would make them for my friends:

For Barbie: Continued happiness (and warmth) in Canada, more healthy (injury free) running, a successful school year, and her husband in the same house!

For Kentucky: Health and happiness for her family and that she makes it through a particularly difficult New Years, and a wonderful wedding in the fall!

For Legally: A relatively stress- (and boredom-) free job, a visit to The Bachelorette Pad (ok that one’s selfish on my part), and more success with her cake/goodies baking (if you haven’t checked it out on my blog links – Seriously Sweet is seriously cute), and hopefully she’ll bring me some goodies too (selfish plug #2), and more (injury free) of that super fast running she seems to do!

For Bama: A successful school year, more fun nights watching TV (seriously that girl loves to entertain), and visits to both of our pools!

For Mister T: A happy, healthy year for his family, and better decision making skills for our lunch dates.

For Mama-cita: That her children continue to be happy and healthy, and a stress-free year with family.

For Shutterbug: Lots and lots of work that is both fun and lucrative, and an opportunity to shoot us fire hooping!

For zico01: More fun blogging and commenting (I always look forward to his comments here), and a joint blogging adventure with me and Barbie!

For all my hooper friends: Lots of hooping, pretty hoops, and success on the Hooping the Half Marathon event day!

For Diva Kitty: Lots and lots of cheese, fish, and crepes. (Yes apparently she likes crepes now) More fun looking out the window at birds, squirrels, and chipmunks. And attacking whatever it is that irks her on the stairs in the Bachelorette Pad.

What is that? Someone hoop-walking. It’s no secret that Sally is a hooper and runs half marathons. So, how about hoop-walking a half marathon? Well, that’s exactly what I’m going to do! I have been asked to train a group of women to hoop the half marathon. I am very excited to join this group in their training and charitable purpose! So, I’ve run 13.1 miles, but this will be my first time to hoop 13.1 miles. If you’re in town in April, come see us as we bring the best entertainment to the event with our pink hoops!

This post is going to officially qualify for the TMI award of my blog, but I felt it important to bare my soul (or at least part of me) to my readers. Note: This posting is not for readers under the age of 18, and preferably over the age of 30.

I recently garnered enough courage to experiment with something that had always piqued my curiosity, but also slightly terrified me. With a potential body-exposing event planned in my near future, I figured this was the perfect time to make a visit to my new local aesthetician. I intended to start simple, just taking a little off the edges and see how I feel about it. Well, dear readers, I must confess that Sally took a trip to a certain South American country instead and returned with much less baggage than she started. Yes, that is correct, Sally is really quite bare. Fortunately I still remember some of my Portuguese.

I can’t stop thinking about a certain Sex & the City episode. So Sally has ventured to another land so you don’t have to. And to answer your questions…yes, it does hurt. But surprisingly it hurt more after the fact than during, though that is only for a couple days. It’s actually not that weird or awkward as I thought, certainly no worse than my doctor visit. Yes, I’ll probably do it again, it takes a few visits before your body becomes accustomed to it. Next time I will take the strong Canadian ibuprofen again like this time, but I will also use some of this product that I ordered for my next visit.

How do you fuel the holidays? Through commercialism and advertisements.* Yes, it’s that time of year, when we’re bombarded by retailers hawking guilt and happiness rather than focusing on good will, family, and whatever-else-do-gooders-love.

Jewelry
As I flip through the radio stations in my car, every single station is currently on a jewelry commercial. “Make her happy this season.” “Give him the watch that shows him you care.” “Every kiss begins with Kay.” Nope sorry, I’m pretty sure there are other things you can do (that don’t cost money) that show him you care, and as my fabulous hairdresser put it, every kiss begins with you buying me dinner. Also, why is there this enormous pressure to get engaged over the holidays? Isn’t it already stressful enough to worry about buying someone a present and/or the fact that you’re single without having that thrown in your face every seven minutes during your favorite tv show or pop/rock/hip-hop/country/etc. station?

LexusI have decided I’m going to attack just one automobile manufacturer rather than the whole lot of them. (Besides, our own local ones have enough problems of their own up in Detroit.) Every year this overpriced Toyota starts showing sedans and SUVs with giant red bows on them. The husband/wife/significant other makes the other look out the window to see such a display and they are so excited. And for a moment we’re transported from reality. Seriously? Who here thinks they could 1. afford to buy a luxury car as a gift, 2. buy it without the significant other noticing the large chunk of money missing and/or credit check and/or change in insurance, 3. go through points 1 &2 and not get smacked, do some serious explaining, and then have to take it back the next day? I mean really, I don’t have any friends or family who could feasibly do this. And those who can do this kind of gift-giving, do you think they really watch South Park, The Office, or whatever else normal people watch on tv?

Perfume
Fortunately I haven’t come across too many of these commercials this year, yet. But inevitably there are commercials featuring a strong rugged guy with a horse in the snow (Stetson) or a woman in the loving arms of a man who is obviously entranced by her scent that you can almost smell it through your tv (Prince Matchabelli, Chanel, Estee Lauder, et al.). Maybe the old school commercials have gone by the wayside to all the popstars peddling their own particular scent of fame and shamelessness (Britney, Paris Hilton, Mariah, 50 Cent, Tim McGraw, Michael Jordan to name a few). Sorry popstars, whatever you smell like, I probably don’t want it.

So, for the next month we will suffer through these ad nauseam. Stay tuned for more Ad-renaline posts where I question just what the hell is wrong with ad companies and the stations that air their commercials.

*Note – I prefer the British advert-iss-ment, as my reader zico01 would say, over the American adver-tize-ment.

It’s a grey, damp coldness of a day. I sit in my office with no windows, but I’m aware of the dreariness nonetheless. I’d much rather taken a nap this morning. Or even now if I could. Last week was a short week due to the long holiday weekend and I’m feeling it this week. Two more days? Really?

Is it time to hibernate yet?

The good news is that I apparently battled for my long weekends and won. Quite fabulously unintentionally. A quick look at this month’s calendar and I have a vacation/holiday scheduling bonanza that I didn’t even plan. Last week’s holiday presented a long 4-day weekend. Full week this week. Next week Sally has another birthday and I decided to take off both the birthday and the Friday that follows. Ta-da! Another 4-day weekend. Full week the week after my birthday. Then another holiday rolls around perfectly on Thursday and Friday the next week, this one without any vacation requests. And what do my excited little blue eyes see…why yes, Virginia, that is another 4-day weekend immediately following with a holiday and conveniently scheduled vacation day. To recap, that’s four 4-day weekends in six weeks. Sweet.

Guess that makes getting through the next two days much easier. Even with all the blah weather.